ACADEMIA Letters

Approaches to Digital Visual Arts Through Design

Iteration
Safa Tharib

Iterative design is an approach to a project that is built on a cyclic process of recurrence.

The method is connected to the practice of computer programming and the phrase has been
used in computer science since 1990 (Gossain and Anderson, 1990). This article frames
cyclic it- erative methods as well suited to the ever-changing field of digital visual arts.
Design iteration opposed to iterative design can be used as umbrella term to describe all
repeated cyclic ap- proaches. Artistic disciplines which embrace the use of digital methods
within the creative arts present themselves with more possibilities in terms of design
iteration than traditional meth- ods. The idea of working non-destructively in digital modes
is appealing in the application of testing and exploring new ideas on an existing piece of
work. This applies to digital video, drawing and 3D modelling. The very nature of digital
methods invites reflective questioning at each stage towards the final outcome of the works.
De Bono’s approaches to lateral thinking offers tools that aid with and inform on the
ideation of a project and methods to harvest the generated ideas from the use of the
cognitive tools he propositions (De Bono, 1970). When we consider De Bono’s approaches
to digital arts specifically the lack of physical form digital mediums has presents us with a
fluid mode of working that can be constantly tweaked and iterated on at nearly every stage
of production if not every stage. The process itself undulates between states of iteration and
reiteration due to the ability to undo and redo changes. This is opposed to the more rigid
forms that analogue mediums take wherein, iteration is destructive with each change
working on top of a previous state without the ability to go back.
The idea of modular cyclic methods being used in digital mediums has been widely
adopted in software development. Agile Scrum methods have proved themselves to be
effective in handling large consumer facing projects such as video games by modularising
the project into smaller manageable parts know as sprints (Schwaber and Beedle, 2001).
That said, this is not

Academia Letters, April ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY
2021 4.0
Corresponding Author: Safa Tharib, safa.tharib@canterbury.ac.uk
Citation: Tharib, S. (2021). Approaches to Digital Visual Arts Through Design Iteration. Academia Letters,
Article 676. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL676.
1
an iterative approach and often requires at least a tentative technical plan of the overall
project to be able to be implemented. Moreover, the Scrum method speaks more closely
with software based commercial projects rather than visual research, the former gleaning
more from a quan- titative approach with the applied sense of being done with a certain
task and moving on to the next. Sullivan describes the research pursuit of visual arts as a
‘critical inquiry that responds to research demands by exploring the unknown’ (Sullivan,
2006). An explorative study con- ducted with a practice based visual arts approach does
not have the liberty of being able to gain a sense of the overall project in a manner that
would allow for various components to be separated into sprints. De Bono’s lateral
thinking approaches allow for creative outcomes that one would not normally expect such
as using the sense of smell to correlate with a photocopy machine running out of paper
through random word associations (De Bono, 1992). That said, lateral thinking opens up a
mode of study to more questions through movement techniques that offer more branches of
investigation as the method is applied. As previously stated, the practice of digital visual
arts allows for a previously unprecedented level of iteration. This maybe unappealing to
commercial or visual research projects with strict time limits.
We must consider the practice of visual arts has changed and evolved. One such
example could be the comparison between traditional sculpture to 3D digital sculpture in
the very fact that traditional methods of sculpture do not allow for the undo and redo
functionally that 3D digital sculpture does. Moreover, in the medium of 3D digital
sculpture large details can be further tweaked and adjusted throughout the creative process
through the use of sub-division levels, while major changes to the volume of an artefact in
the traditional realm would be near to impossible due to the destructive approach the
medium requires. The benefits of such medium work well in an exploratory sense to the
relative ease one has in changing the form to meet the demands of a study as it evolves.
That said, we can now consider new iterative approaches when working with what can be
considered shapeless digital mediums that may not have been possible before. The idea of
shapelessness in the medium corresponds with the pursuit of an explorative study into
something that is unknown. Reflective practices such as Borton’s learning cycle of what, so
what and what now? Popularised in his book Reach, Touch, and Teach(Borton, 2014)
Borton’s methods have been widely used by nursing professionals to gain qualitative
understandings of their patients (Girot, 2002). Kolb’s reflective model allows for
information to be turned into usable knowledge through experience, observation and the
formation of concepts that can be applied to teaching practices (Kolb, 1984). Gibbs’
reflective model allows for analytical understandings of a situation as well as feelings in
regard to that situation to form an evaluation of the work or situation. Gibbs’ model can be
explained as starting with a factual description of an event, then addressing feelings of said
event. The overall experience is evaluated with distinctions made in regard to both good
and bad points
of the event. The event is then analysed and explained. Then the approach to the event is
analysed and finally an action plan is created and the cycle begins again (Gibbs, 2013).
While this model was not created for the practice of digital visual arts it can be applied by
positioning the artefact in place of the subject. Wherein, one would assess the qualities of
the work through an auto-ethnographic approach that starts with addressing the superficial
details in place of the description. We then move on to state our feelings towards that
artefact and evaluate it by stating the good and bad points of it. The analysis then focuses
in on how well it communicates our intentions and the second analysis addresses what
more could be done to better communicate these intentions. Finally, we develop key points
of change and begin the cycle again.
When to stop the iterative process becomes a new problem in creative digital works. To
interrogate this notion, we could consider Bazin’s theory of objective reality in terms of the
visual aspects of digital image wherein the images themselves create their own reality
(Andrew and Younger, 2012). This idea is highly problematic when we consider how much
and to what extent iteration and reworking of an image has occurred between its inception
to final image. Ignoring the fact that no part of the image necessarily has objectively real
elements, the time itself is still contained within a specific time of human understandings of
art and design. The idea of objective reality within the image is likely gone in a pure sense
as described by Bazin. Bazin himself took issue with lighting and built sets of cinematic
works stating that reality is not acknowledged in such works (Morgan, 2006). That said,
iterating on works after they have been released to the public sphere has now become
common place in films, printed media and video games. Digital artefacts now exist in a
creative sphere wherein they can be iterated upon with or even without the original
collaborators.
The idea that a work within the realm of visual arts is ever truly complete is fading. The
very nature of working within digital forms now allows for constant tweaking and
reiteration seemingly at any stage and at any point. Digital works themselves present an
ever-evolving artefact due to the lack of physicality of the piece. Where new and
repurposed cyclic methods based on the idea of design iteration can be applied and should
be further explored within the context of the practice.

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